Statistics

This one got to me. I remember when my brother was suffering from cancer he received a call from former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz. It meant so much to my brother and the entire family. So this story had me from the start. The South Bend Tribue has the story:

After the last teardrop fell and the search for normalcy kick-started, perhaps futilely so, the phone call pierced the temporary numbness.

Literally minutes after saying good-bye to their 26-year-old son at Calvary Cemetery in Sioux City, Iowa, Randy and Nancy Barker received yet another in-your-face reminder of just how alive the legacy of their late son, Cole Jacob Barker, truly was.

Cole did eventually succumb glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer on May 5 — if you can call it succumbing. He was given three-to-five months to live by doctors after the persistent headaches Cole suffered in the fall of 2004 were revealed in mid-November of that year to be the result of a tumor in the frontal lobe of his brain.

He was a senior at Notre Dame at the time, but had to drop out of school to undergo surgery.

"When Cole first died, I said I didn't ever want to go back to Notre Dame," Nancy said, her voice crescendoing with emotion, "because when I miss him really bad, I pretend he's there."